To van Andel’s assertion that “The very moment I can plan or programme ‘serendipity’ it cannot be called serendipity anymore,” we would reply that we can certainly describe patterns (and programs) with built-in indeterminacy. Figure \ref{fig:va-pattern-figure} presents an example, showing how one of van Andel’s patterns of serendipity can be rewritten as a design pattern using the template suggested by our model. In future work, we would aim to build a more complete pattern language along similar lines, and show how this language can be used to transform raw data into “strategic data.” The example pattern describes a scenario that is quite close to Pease et al.’s description of an online system that gathers new modules over time, and for which, periodically, new combinations of modules can yield new and interesting results. Developing experiments along these lines may help prepare the groundwork for the more involved development projects discussed in the current paper. Patterns of serendipity, like the one in Figure \ref{fig:va-pattern-figure}, offer useful heuristic guidelines for human programmers and convey a sense of our long-term plans for serendipitous computing systems.
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Van Andel’s example – Post-it Notes
– You run a creative organisation with several different divisions and many contributors with different expertise.
– One of the members of your organisation discovers something with interesting properties, but no one knows how to turn it into a product with industrial or commercial application.
– You create a space for sharing and discussing interesting ideas on an ongoing basis (perhaps a Writers Workshop).
– You suspect it’s possible that one of the other members of the firm will come up with an idea about an application; you know that if a potential application is found, it may not be directly marketable, but at least there will be a prototype that can be concretely discussed.
– The Successful error pattern rewritten using this template is an example of a similar prototype, showing that serendipity can be talked about in terms of design patterns.